Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Bob Dylan was impressed by those young American
students who went to Cuba to support the Cuban Revolution despite the legal
restrictions imposed by the government making such travel illegal. Dylan met
some of them at a New York apartment, introduced to them by his girlfriend
Suzie Rotolo.

Among those who Dylan met was Corliss Lamont,
leftist radical writer and author of a pamphlet “Crime Against Cuba” that was
distributed by the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), copies of which were
handed out by Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.

It has been alleged that the specific copies in
Oswald’s possession were numbered copies that were in a batch that, according
to Lamont’s records, sold and sent to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The Warren Report says Oswald got Lamont’s phamplet
from the New York City office of the FPCC, which was then being targeted by the
FBI and CIA, as were the students who attempted to break the travel to Cuba
embargo.

Besides Dylan, his good friend and fellow protest
singer and songwriter Phil Ochs also supported the FPCC and frequented their
New York City office.

Ochs had attended an exclusive military academy with
Barry Goldwater, Jr. and the sons of other high ranking military officers, and
enlisted in the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Program (ROTC) while a college
student in Ohio. One of his duties included spying on campus anti-war groups,
but then his dorm room mate taught him how to play the guitar and he began
writing political songs and ballads on such subjects as such as assassinated
civil rights leader Medgar Evers, Billy Sol Etes, Christine Keeler, General
Walker and the war in Vietnam – “Draft Dodger Rag.” His song “Crucifixioin” is
supposed to be about the Kennedy assassination.

Ochs later told his old roommate Jim Glover that,
under the direction of his former ROTC officer, he went to Dallas and was in
Dealey Plaza “as a national security observer” when the president was
assassinated.

Ochs also went insane, changing his name to CIA
agent John Train before committing suicide after a number of public
confrontations with his former friend Bob Dylan.

John Train, it turns out, is the name of a real CIA
officer who ran CIA propriety companies out of his New York City offices that were
visited by George deMohrenschildt in April 1963, shortly after he left his
friend Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas. At the same time deMohresnschildt also met
Col. Sam Kail and Dorothie Matlack, who reported to the Pentagon office known
as ACSI - the Assistant Chief of Staff Intelligence (US Army Reserves). Kail
had previously been stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Havana while ACSI was
directed by the same officers who the Texas Army Reserve commanders reported to
from Dallas, including those who became entwined in the assassination.

When Castro visited New York, stayed at a Harlem
hotel and addressed the United Nations, CIA-Cuban G-2 Double Agent LICOZY-3 was
ostensibly recruited and identified only as an American student from
Philadelphia who went to Mexico City, and was later terminated as an agent by
Phil Agee while he was still a faithful CIA officer.

Fifteen years later, when investigators from the
House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) requested specific CIA files,
they were given practically everything they asked for, except the names of the
Double-agents in Mexico City.

Based on public records and recently records
released under the JFK Act, some researchers suspect LICOZY-3 to be Steve
Kenin, an American student from Philadelphia who went to Cuba, met and was
photographed with Fidel Castro and went to Mexico City.

Kenin also knew Suzie Rotolo, Dylan’s girlfriend who
had introduced Dylan to the pro-Castro Cuban crowd in New York city, as she
attended the same upstate New York summer camp as Steve Kenin and his twin brother
Elliot, both of whom were aspiring folk musicians. The Kenin brothers owned a
music store

just around the corner from Rittenhouse Square.

Some other curious events stand out from the
recently released records, including reports of Oswald’s sudden and
inexpliciable appearance handing out FPCC leaflets in Philadelphia at
Rittenhouse Square in the summer of 1963 when the Quebec to Guantamano March
passed through.

The same marchers had previously marched from Quebec
to Moscow in the name of peace and nuclear disarmament, and passed through
Minsk when Oswald lived there, but it’s not known if they met. A few weeks
later, when they got to Washington D.C., one of the marchers, amateur boxer Ray
Robinson got into a fistfight inside a parked car with former CIA officer
Wilcox, who testified before the HSCA that he handled a secret fund for Oswald
when he was stationed in the Marines in Japan.

After passing through New York City, where they met
with FPCC activists, the marchers arrived in Philadelphia where they had a rally
at Rittenhouse Square when Oswald was reported to have handed out his leaflets,
and just around the corner from where Steve and Elliot Kenin ran the Guitar
Workshop.

Steve attended Temple University where one of his
professors had relocated to Cuba to teach at Havana University during the
revolution, after which Steve himself traveled to Cuba, met and had his picture
taken with Castro, and wrote about his experiences for the Temple student
newspaper.

Steve Kenin also edited the program for the first
Philadelphia Folk Festival and did the same for the Newport Folk Festival the
following year when Dylan famously performed. Kenin knew Suzie Rotolo from
summer camp and knew Dylan from Newport, and named his son Dylan.

Bob Dylan came to Philadelphia in October 1963 to
play his first major theater concert at Town Hall (Masonic Temple at North
Broad, demolished in 1980s), the night before he played and recorded at Carnege
Hall in New York city.

Among the songs Dylan wrote around that time:

Goen’ to Accopolco –

In 1963 Steve Kenin took off on his motorcycle to
ride around Mexico and wrote an article about his adventures for Motorcycle
Magazine and visitede Accopolco and Mexico City where he reportedly met Lee Harvey Oswald.

In Mexico City Steve Kenin stayed at a Quaker hostel
“Cassa d’Amego,” which is supported by
Philadelphia Quakrs, and he hung out at a Mexican restaurant near the American
embassy that was popular with other Americans, including Oswald. According to a
Mexican lawyer who was there, he last saw Kenin ride off on his motorcycle with
Lee Oswald on the back, heading for the Cuban embassy to try to get visas to
Cuba.

Oswald did go to the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in a
failed attempt to get a visa to Cuba, and at the Cuban embassy he dealt with a
Syliva Duran.

Shortly thereafter two other young Americans in
Mexico City also contacted Sylvia Duran in an attempt to get visas to Cuba, and
while there, reportedly attended a Twist Party at Duran’s apartment, a party also
attended by Lee Harvey Oswald.

Of the other two Americans, one was recognized as a
movie actor Richard Beymer - the star of the then popular West Side Story,
which includes the music of Leonard Bernstein, who was also profoundly impacted
by JFK’s murder.

Beymer was accompanied by a friend, the owner of a
Manhattan bar that featured live music who also knew Bob Dylan.

Tracked down and questioned about the CIA records
that mention him and the Twist Party, Beymer was quite surprised by the whole
thing, not having been questioned by anyone before.

Yes, he went to Mexico City and Acapulco in 1963
with his friend, the owner of a Manhattan bar, and yes, they were young and
footloose and fancy free and may have attended a Twist Party at a private
apartment, but no, he doesn’t remember Sylvia Duran or Lee Harvey Oswald.

His friend who owned a Manhattan bar, now a Catholic
priest, recalls that they were in Mexico on November 22, 1963 when the
assassination occurred, and since they were only there for a few weeks they
couldn’t have been in Mexico in late September and early October when Oswald
was there.

As for Steve Kenin, he says that he doesn’t remember
meeting Oswald or giving him a ride to the Cuban Embassy on his motorcycle,
though he did try to get a visa to go back to Cuba, but had probably left
Mexico before Oswald arrived.

He is a bit perplexed however, by what the CIA
records say about him and the accounts of witnesses implicate him with
Oswald and Castro. It makes one wonder what would have happened if the story
came out shortly after the assassination, even if it wasn’t true, that Kenin had
given Oswald a ride to the Cuban Embassy and then the photo of him and Castro
further connected Oswald and Castro?

Could that have been a psyops ploy to link Oswald and Castro and what would it mean?

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

The last time Bob Dylan played the Jersey Shore he
went for a walk and was stopped by young, rookie female cop who thought him a
suspicious character walking aimlessly about a residential neighborhood. The girl
just didn’t recognize Bob Dylan, even when he introduced himself.

That didn’t happen when Bob Dylan came to Philadelphia
to take the stage at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia November 21-22-23, a
trilogy of shows that were billed as the first time Dylan has played a center
city theater since 1963.

Those who were there will flashback to October 25,
1963 - Philadelphia Town Hall – the Scottish Rite Cathedral at 150 North Broad at
Race Street, a beautiful building that was leveled in 1983. The same setting
was the preferred recording space for Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia
Orchestra after the Academy of Music was remodeled in 1950. The Academy
acoustics were fine for the live performances, but recoded flat and served Dylan
well when he performed there.

As usual, Dylan took a walk around the Academy of
Music neighborhood and found McGlinchy’s Bar behind the Academy, where he had a
beer and was recognized by some who remembered him from when he performed in
1963. They recall a younger, wilder Dylan who stopped by Dirty Franks on Pine
Street, where he was asked to leave for being “a drunken asshole.”

For some reason it is somehow comforting to know
that the conscience of a generation, the Godfather of folk and protest songs,
with a doctorate from Princeton and having been awarded the Tom Paine and
presidential Freedom awards, the heir to Whitman and Ginsberg as the poet and
songwriter of our age, can also be a drunken asshole.

Dylan was much more reserved this time around.

Dylan’s current major theater tour coincides with
the release of a new, restored digital version of the legendary Basement Tapes
as well as the release of a new version of some of the Basement Tape songs
covered by new artists including T. Bone Burnett, Elvis Costello and Marcus Mulford
of the Mulford Family.

While the concerts certainly attracted the aging hippie
crowd - the over-under was fifty five, the Basement Tapes recordings should be
of interest to the younger crowd, not only because of their role in the history
of the music, but also the continued interest by the new artists in the nearly
half-century old Big Pink Basement tape recordings.

It may be technically true that Dylan hasn’t
performed in a center city Philadelphia theater since 1963, but he has
performed on his “never ending tour” at the Tower in Upper Darby in West Philly
in 1994 and at the Electric Factory in Society Hill a few years ago, but it has
been fifty years since Dylan made his mark as a major theater attraction in
both New York and Philadelphia.

It was in 1963 when Dylan performed with Joan Baiz
on the same stage as Martin Luther King, Jr. during the march on Washington,
released his celebrated second “Freewheelen’” album for Columbia, received an
honorary doctorate degree from Princeton, performed at Carnegie Hall and
received the Tom Paine Award.

Then everything started going wrong – Newsweek
called him a fake for trying to manipulate the media, they booed him at the Tom
Paine Awards and he began to break up with his girlfriend Suzie Rotolo – who is
seen walking down McDougle Street with Dylan arm in arm on the album cover.

What happened between his celebrated theater shows
in October and being booed while receiving the Tom Paine Award? John Kennedy
was killed, an event that influenced Dylan and his entire generation, and still
continues to haunt us today.

And so on November 22 it overshadowed Dylan’s dark
theatrical performance as much as the echo of the basement tapes.

Dylan’s principled interest in social issues and
causes branded him political, and one of his first benefit concerts was for the
civil rights Freedom Riders, but he detested being called “the conscience of
his generation,” and refused to support other causes though he did perform at
Live Aid, and much to the chagrin of Bog Geldorf, sang a song about a farmer
and called for the struggling American farmers who feed the world, a remark
that sparked the founding of Farm Aid, which he also supported.

But he once said he didn’t vote in the 1960 election
because he didn’t recognize any candidates who looked and thought like him. Of
John Kennedy he said he was a fake and pretender.

But later, Dylan told Kurt Loder in a Rolling Stone
interview that Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers are spiritual icons
who planted seeds that are still growing today. And in his autobiographical Chronicals Dylan recounts how his mother
told him she saw JFK when he visited his hometown of Hibbing, Minnissotta,
which led him to say that he would have voted for JFK for just visiting his
hometown.

Dylan’s mother and father Mr. and Mrs. Zimmerman,were
in the audience when he performed at Carnegie Hall. Dylan had legally changed
his name from Robert A. Zimmerman to Bob Dylan in 1962 and arranged for his
parents to be in the audience for the Carnegie Hall show, a big step for him to
go from playing coffee houses, cafes and nightclubs to performing solo at Carnegie
Hall.

The night before – October 24, 1963, Dylan performed
Philadelphia’s Town Hall.

A few days earlier he was interviewed for Newsweek
and they branded Dylan a fake pretender who manipulated the media and maybe
didn’t actually write the hit song, “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Instead, Newsweek
reported, the hit song that was fanning revolution was instead written by
Millburn, New Jersey high school student Lorrie Wyatt,” who fellow students
claimed sang the song before Dylan, and Newsweek printed the false rumor even
as Wyatt denied it.

In the two months between Town Hall and Carnegie
Hall and the Tom Paine Award, JFK was killed, and the assassination was still
on his mind and he talked about it when he accepted the award.

As he put it: “So, I accept this reward - not
reward, (Laughter) award in behalf of Phillip Luce who led the group to Cuba
which all people should go down to Cuba. I don't see why anybody can't go
to Cuba. I don't see what's going to hurt by going any place. I don't know
what's going to hurt anybody's eyes to see anything. On the other hand, Phillip
is a friend of mine who went to Cuba.”

Dylan said: “I'll stand up and to get
uncompromisable about it, which I have to be to be honest, I just got to be, as
I got to admit that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I
don't know exactly where —what he thought he was doing, but I got to admit
honestly that I too - I saw some of myself in him. I don't think it would have
gone - I don't think it could go that far. But I got to stand up and say I saw
things that he felt, in me - not to go that far and shoot. (Boos and hisses)
You can boo but booing's got nothing to do with it. It's a - I just a - I've
got to tell you, man, it's Bill of Rights is free speech and I just want to
admit that I accept this Tom Paine Award in behalf of James Forman of the
Students Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and on behalf of the people who went
to Cuba.” (Boos and Applause).

Although Dylan took exception to being called the
social conscience of a generation, he did accept the Princeton doctorate and
took the Tom Paine Award in honor of those American students who disregarded the
tourist embargo and illegally traveled to Cuba. Dylan had met them through his
girl, Suzie Rotollo,

It wasn’t honoring the students who went to Cuba
that bothered the audience of 1500 well heeled liberals whose donations kept
the non-profit organization afloat, it was Dylan’s remark that he could somewhat sympathize with Oswald – the
man accused of killing JFK. Oswald himself had tried to get a visa to Cuba and
like Tom Paine, he handed out leaflets in New Orleans and got into a scuffle
with some anti-Castro Cubans.

But the audience wasn’t buying that speil, and was
ushered off stage – getting the hook, and the incident inspired him to write a
poem in which he tried to explain himself.

From the toast of the town to being shunned by
liberals, Dylan decided to hit the road, literally, and drove cross country to
perform few college dates and visit a few new places, including New Orleans
French Quarter, Oswald’s old neighborhood, and Dealey Plaza in Dallas where
Kennedy was killed.

In Dallas, as did the Beatles and David
Crosby, Dylan went to Dealey Plaza to see where President Kennedy was
killed. The Beatles ducked in the back of their limo as they drove past the Texas School Book Depository Building and
Grassy Knoll and then retired to their rooms at the Dallas Cabana Hotel, where
some of the witnesses and suspects had famously stayed on the weekend of the
assassination.

When Dylan was looking
for Dealey Plaza and the first few Dallas pedestrians
couldn’t direct him to the spot, Dylan was perplexed, and then finally found a
pedestrian who directed them to the site and said, “You mean where they killed
that son-of-a-bitch,"

So when Dylan performed
at the Academy of Music on November 22, 2014 – the fifty first anniversary of
the assassination, the event hovered in the background like a dark cloud over
the dark stage on which he performed.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

The
place is sacred, a pivotal crossroads where an X marks the spot in the middle
of Elm Street where a man’s head was blown apart by a sniper’s bullet in an
ambush at precisely 12:30 pm on Friday, November 22, 1963.

This is
the place, the exact spot where John F. Kennedy met his fate, his rendezvous
with death, where tourists visit and pilgrims flock, sometimes in droves, other
times late at night when nobody else is around, but especially shortly after
noon every November 22nd, when there is always a witness who
returns, someone who was there and is drawn back to the spot like a magnet. To
revisit the theater, to remember the moment when JFK’s life went dark.

Thirty
years to the moment later they had a traditional moment of silence and played
taps and then everyone drifted off and went on their way, back to their lives.

That’s
where I met Gaeton Fonzi, tall and slim and humble, I recognized him standing anonymously
quiet in the back of the dispersing crowd. I introduced myself and mentioned the
name Alan Halpern, the Philadelphia Magazine editor who played a pivotal behind
the scenes role in the big game. With his name Fonzi’s eyes lit up and we
walked off talking.

Of
Dealey Plaza Fonzi later wrote: “there is only a stillness there now, a
breezeless serenity. On the right is the famous red brick building, flat,
hard-edged, its rows of sooty windows now dull. In my mind, I dropped into a
well of time and fell against that instant of history. A man was killed here.
Here in, an explosively horrible and bloody moment, a man’s life ended. That
realization – a man was killed here – had been oddly removed from the whirlwind
of activity in which I had been involved. A man was killed here, and what had
been going on in Washington – all the officious meetings and the political
posturing, all the time and attention devoted to administrative procedures and
organizational processes and forms and reports, and now all the scurrying about
in a thousand directions in the mad rush to produce a final report – all of
that seemed detached from the reality of a single fact: A man was killed here.
I stood in Dealey Plaza….and could not help thinking that the powers that
controlled the Assassinations Committee would have searched much harder for the
truth if they had remembered that instant of time when a man’s life ended
here.”

But the
assassins’ bullets that struck down Jack Kennedy didn’t just violate his person
and end his life - they also struck a severe blow to the very core of our
nation’s constitutional body, a wound that won’t fully heal until the full story
is told.

COPA’s
Last Stand - @ the Grassy Knoll

After
last year’s debacle, when the City of Dallas took over the Grassy Knoll, locked
out the public and kept John Judge and COPA members from holding a moment of
silence, this November 22nd is the 50th anniversary of
when Penn Jones held the first moment of silence at the scene of the crime in
1964.

Now it’s
our turn, since John Judge, as he tried to do every year, obtained a city
permit for COPA to be at Dealey Plaza, and was hell bent to be there and hold a
solemn and respectful memorial service that would be open to all and done with
dignity, honor, respect and the truth be told, as Judge always said that this
was a time to “speak truth to power.”

A true
coalition, by definition, is established by a number of focus groups with
different interests but a common goal, and we may all have different opinions
as to who killed JFK and how they did it, but we all agree that the government
files on the assassination should be open.

When the
AARC and CTKA withdrew from COPA they left John Judge its director, and rather
than fold, as they expected, Judge pretty much kept COPA together by himself,
organizing the regional conferences in Dallas, Memphis and Los Angeles almost
every year, and spearheading the establishment of the Hidden History Museum,
all with the assistance of a few, select patrons – Dr. Wecht, Gene Case, Bob
Danello, Frank Caplett and others who generously donated money to COPA – a
not-for-profit but not tax-exempt organization.

Because
COPA was or could be a political action organization, endorse candidates, sue
the government – file FOIA and Civil action suites in the name of the
organization – rather than subjecting an individual – i.e. Morley v. CIA – we
could sue under COPA’s name and protect individuals from harassment and
retribution. We were empowered by our association, some of which is detailed in
A Brief History of COPA [ JFKcountercoup: A Brief History of COPA]

As
usual, there are two separate and competing conferences in Dallas this November
– one by Debra Conway and Lancer and the other by a Facebook group led by
Judyth Vary Baker.

COPA has
the permit for the Dealey Plaza event at 12:30 and it will be led by longtime
Regional Dallas COPA members Robert Groden, Frank Caplett and Tom Blackwell,
and be filmed by Randy Benson. Other COPA members may also attend from out of
town.

Both Tom
Blackwell and Randy have films of John Judge leading the moment of silence
memorial service over the past years, and they should be reviewed to see how
they did it, and see how it should continually be done by those who are there.

John
usually began by describing how Penn Jones began the first moment of silence in
1964, a tradition that has been continued by John Judge, Blackwell, Caplett and
others over the years and should continue into the future.

Beverly
Oliver usually sings an appropriate song and a few short speeches are made
[See: The Event that Didn’t Happen 1998] –

At
12:30, the minute JFK was shot in the head, all falls quiet for one minute – it
has been suggested that this year the moment of silence last 50 seconds – one
for each year.

One year
they played taps and a Marine officer walking past me suddenly stopped, snapped
to attention and saluted the Plaza flag while the bugle was being played.

Sometimes
there is a sound system, and this year Alan Dale will supply one. I met Dale
and had dinner with him one night during the AARC Sept. 2014 Conference in
Bethesda. He’s a DC band leader who is comfortable in front of a microphone and
served as the MC at the AARC conference and will do the same at the Lancer
conference in Dallas.

There
wasn’t going to be a Lancer conference in Dallas this year, and it was only
after the AARC Conference in Bethesda in September that they decided to hold a
short two-day affair that Larry Hancock helped organize.

It’s no
secret John Judge didn’t like Lancer and Lancer didn’t like John Judge but John
Judge is dead and Lancer is on its last legs – and may not put together another
conference in Dallas, so there’s room to continue that tradition if that’s what
the local Dallas COPA contingent wants to do.

Then
they will resign to the local IHOP restaurant for lunch and decide on what the
future of Dallas COPA will be. They have already voiced the opinion that they
should host a conference or symposium to present the newest research and
discuss the work of authors with new books on the subject.

The
Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) conference in Bethesda on the
50th Anniversary of the release of the Warren Report in September
seemed at the time that it would be the last major conference on the Kennedy
assassination, at least until the release of the remaining sealed records in
2017.

With the
death of John Judge, who organized the COPA conferences in Dallas and Debra
Conway’s announcement that Lancer wasn’t going to hold any more conferences
there, it seemed like it was JFK’s Last Hurrah. But then Debra Conway reconsidered
and decided to hold a min-two day conference in Dallas this year and out of the
blue Judith Vary Baker announced that she had raised enough money through
Facebook to put on a free conference at the same time.

So once
again, just as in DC in September and as usual in Dallas, there will be two
competing conferences in Dallas on the 51st anniversary of the
assassination, and the Dallas COPA contingent will be meeting at the same time
to plan for some future activities, including some possible conferences.

Such
conferences are important to advance the state of knowledge about things and
there can’t be a more important subject than political assassination.

There
was an important academic conference on Guatemala in 1954, shortly before the
coup there, and a conference of exiled Cuban journalists was held at the
University of Miami (JMWAVE) in the summer of 1963, which I consider significant events. And there have been a
number of important conferences on the assassination of President Kennedy. The
first I attended in the mid-1970s was held at NYU in New York City, where I met
Penn Jones, Fletcher Prouty, Mae Brussel and Ralph Schoeman, and COPA – the
Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) was formed at the second ASK
conference in Dallas in 1993, and COPA’s first two national conferences in DC
were extremely important and influential in getting the JFK Act passed.

If COPA
is to continue into the future, as the Dallas COPA contingent are determined to
continue, it won’t be able to organize expensive annual regional conferences in Dallas, LA and
Memphis as John Judge tried to do, but it can co-sponsor an annual Dallas event
as long as expenses are covered and it is organized by local volunteers.

One of
the reasons we formed COPA was because the company that organized the ASK
conferences was a private for-profit corporation not really interested in
President Kennedy or the assassination, and now we see that if the Dallas COPA
doesn’t organize a conference for next year, someone else will – and it won’t necessarily be
an academic seminar by eminent forensic investigators, journalists and
historians, as COPA tries to be.

Of the
two conferences in Dallas this year the one being organized by Lancer’s Larry
Hancock and Debra Conway is attempting to present the latest state of the art
research as it was presented at the Wecht Institute in Pittsburgh last October
and at the AARC in Bethesda in September.

Debra
and Larry recruited Alan Dale to be the master of ceremonies at their
conference – a role he effectively played in Bethesda. Dale is a Washington
D.C. based band leader who is comfortable in front of a microphone and is very
knowledgeable about the assassination and related issues. He also produces an
internet radio interview program [JFK Lancer - President John F. Kennedy Assassination Latest News and Research] similar to Len Osnic’s Black Op Radio
[Black Op Radio], and recently interviewed Peter Dale Scott and UK researcher Malcolm
Blunt.

The
Lancer people will also be at the Grassy Knoll at around noon, but recognize
that COPA has the permit for the assembly and will turn over the program to
COPA members Bob Groden, Tom Blackwell and Frank Caplett at the appropriate
time so they can memorialize Penn Jones and John Judge and then continue their
traditional moment of silence.

While COPA will not be sponsoring a conference in Dallas this year, COPA will be hosting the Moment of Silence event at Dealey Plaza at 12:30 pm on Saturday, November 22, 2014, and then meet at a luncheon at the IHOP where they will discuss next year's event and the future of COPA in Dallas.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Once you
realize that the 35th President of the United States was murdered by
a successful and concerted conspiracy and no one has been brought to justice
for the crime you also realize that it wasn’t just an assault on an individual,
but our national security has been grossly violated, a searing wound that will
not heal until the entire truth is known.

It is a
matter of national security – the primary reason they give for not releasing the
remaining records.

While
most people try not to even think about it, when I came to this understanding I
also realized that the president wasn’t killed by any mythical mastermind, the
Mafia, the KGB, Cubans or the CIA, but rather JFK was killed by a very specific
and easily identifiable MO – Modus Operandi – the means by which it happened –
a covert intelligence operation conducted by a domestic network that was
designed to conceal its sponsors.

This MO
narrows the suspects down to the few who in 1963 were knowledgeable of the
history and tradecraft of such military intelligence operations, and was plugged
into that system, a network that is still operating today.

I also
realized what it will take to identify, isolate and expose the intelligence
network responsible for the assassination - a network that is as powerful and
influential as the network that got away with killing a
president – an equal and opposite force.

There
are two different types of investigations – Criminal investigations and
Intelligence investigations, with criminal investigations designed to create
evidence to prosecute criminals in a court of law while intelligence
investigations don’t care about the law and are designed to learn the truth.
And anything goes in an intelligence investigation – especially a CI - Counter-intelligence
investigation – even breaking the law to get it.

It will
take a serious, independent Counter-intelligence investigation to figure out
what really happened on November 22, 1963, and determine who killed JFK how they
did it and why, but it is quite clear that the government won’t do it, so it’s
up to us – ordinary people to conduct that CI investigation.

The
network responsible for the Dealey Plaza operation must eventually be exposed in
order to ensure they don’t do it again, and so no one can use that method again
to subvert democracy.

Now,
fifty years after the murder, we have the capacity and capability or soon will have
the ability to create a network with the knowledge, power and ability to
identify and take that assassination network down.

As Daniel
Ellesberg asked Jeff Morely and Bill Simpich – once you know the truth about
the assassination of JFK, what do you do about it? What do you want people to
do about it?

One
thing we can do about it is to create that equal but opposite force to counter
the killers and the coup – and to oppose and thwart the use of political
assassination as a useful tactic, not only in America but anywhere in the
world.

For every page of federal laws
there are dozens of pages of regulations and administrative interpretations of
the law. For every legislator (every member of Congress or state legislature)
there are thousands of bureaucrats busily writing regulations and implementing
the laws those legislators pass.

The Source of the Greatest Power
in Government – Bureaucrats

These bureaucrats toil in the
executive or administrative branch of government and are in many ways the
source of the greatest power in any government. It is no surprise, therefore,
that issue advocates devote considerable attention to influencing and
persuading them. But what do bureaucrats do? They, and the agencies and
departments and offices for which they work, interpret, enforce, and administer
the law.

The
thousand daily decisions bureaucrats make administering laws can cause issue
advocates more consternation – and require more time and attention – than the
legislative process. Hard-fought legislative success can turn to pyrrhic
victories in the hands of an unfriendly or unresponsive bureaucracy. Indeed,
issue advocates who win legislative battles barely have time to pop the
champagne corks before they must turn their attention to how the law, for which
they fought so hard, will be implemented. Or those who thought they had tamed
the legislative process may learn that the executive branch has implemented
policy changes that accomplish the goals they sought to avoid.

As one
commentator observed: “Nothing in law ever seems finally settled because there
is always one more step in the process where both winners and losers may try to
negotiate different terms.”

Administrative
discretion may be broad, but it is far from absolute. First, administrative
action is limited to the authority afforded the agency by the legislative
branch. By contrast, Congress is limited in its lawmaking activities only by
the Constitution.

Second,
agencies afford the public opportunities to make their views known to, and
considered by, the agency. Congressional committees may choose to hold public
hearings on legislation, but they need not do so, and they are free to ignore
all the witnesses and all the evidence presented to them.

Third,
agency action, as we saw in the last section, can be reviewed by the courts to
ensure the actions comply with all applicable laws and procedures. When
Congress passes a law, it can be challenged in court only on the grounds that
it violates the Constitution.

The
Administrative Procedures Act

The main
vehicle to control agency discretion at the federal level is the Administrative Procedures Act. The law
requires agencies to make most decisions in the open and to afford the public
meaningful opportunities to comment on proposed agency actions. It also allows
those who disagree with the agency decisions to ask courts to invalidate them
if they are not in accordance with applicable law and procedure or if they are
not solidly grounded on the facts and the law.

These
limitations on administrative discretion reflect the fact that agencies can
exercise their discretionary powers by issuing rules or regulations. These
‘minilaws’ codify administrative interpretations and establish clear guidelines
for bureaucrats and the public.

The broad
policy discretion afforded bureaucrats provides issue advocates good reasons to
attempt to influence how laws are enforced and administered. And the processes
of administrative decision making – the requirement that, for the most part, it
be open to the public and subject to judicial review – provide advocates
important tools to accomplish that goal,

Legal Action – Last Resort

The courts are most often the last
resort of those who seek to influence public policy. Litigation is costly and
time-consuming, appeals can drag on for years, and tangible results are often
hard to achieve.

Yet, the federal and state courts
provide critical outlets – safety valves – for issue advocates who are unable
to get a full and fair hearing before the administrative or legislative branch
of government.

The doors
of the courthouse are open to all. Legislatures are accountable only to the
electorate and only at the ballot box. Bureaucracies can be slow and
unresponsive. But advocates who seek
redress in the courts are guaranteed a hearing by an impartial arbiter who will
decide a case on its merits.

Would public
support for sending American troops pass what Senator John Glenn termed the
‘Dover test’? Dover Air Force Base in Delaware would be the point of return for
the bodies of American troops who died on foreign soil. Would American’s, who
initially supported sending troops, maintain their support after American
soldiers died? How reliable were polls that showed people supporting these
actions? No American politician wanted to rely on poorly formed public opinion
that did not recognize and accept that Americans might die in Somalia or Haiti.
The quality and reliability of the public’s opinion mattered.

Finding Words that Work: Just
Free the Files

Words and symbols can shape public
attitudes about issues. The right ones can position an issue so that it
favorably resonates with prevailing public concerns and attracts a broad and
deep base of diverse supporters.

Th e Nature of Coalitions

A
coalition is an alliance, usually limited in time and purpose, between
organizations with different agendas, working together for a common policy
advocacy goal.

The term coalition encompasses a
great diversity of alliances formed to advance a shared public policy goal.
Coalitions can be formal or informal, permanent or temporary.

Coalitions can unite diverse civil
rights or environmental groups as they formulate and advance complex, long-term
agendas. Or they can provide a mechanism to coordinate short-term activities,
such as opposing a Supreme Court nomination…or supporting the balanced budge amendments
to the Constitution.

Network First

Networks often precede
coalitions,just as individuals or organizations sharing information and
common concerns may gradually coalesce into an association or organization
– an interest group – designed to influence policy.

Coalition – Alliance of Orgs

A coalition is an alliance between
organizations, each of which brings its own agenda and decision-making
processes to the coalition table. Since coalition members are organizations,
not individuals, they do not have the same freedom of movement that individuals
have. Interest groups that join coalitions must be sure that the coalition
shares the fundamental goals of the organization and its members.

Coalitions
are at the mercy of their members and can achieve only what the

members permit them to achieve. Their only resources-people
and money – are those that members provide.

Large, permanent coalitions, such
as trade associations, have permanent staff, office space, and resources, all
dedicated to achieving the coalition’s goals. Member organizations pay
substantial dues to support the coalition and its infrastructure.

But most coalitions are ad hoc,
voluntary assemblages of organizations, with little power to compel the member
organizations to commit time and resources to the coalition or to fulfill their
coalition commitments. They are usually staffed by ‘volunteers’ from the member
organizations, some of whom may even be detailed to work exclusively on
coalition projects.

All coalitions are composed of
different organizations with different agendas working together and there are
numerous ways to organize and manage coalitions. The best coalitions are
flexible enough to adapt to their members’ needs and the common goal that has
brought them together.

Finally, coalitions attempt to
recruit organizations whose agendas rarely overlap with those of core coalition
members. In some cases, core coalition members may even try to persuade other
organizations to stretch their issue agendas to include the coalition’s issue.

Why would coalitions recruit so
widely for allies, even going so far as to include organizations with whom they
have never worked on any issue?

Just imagine the reaction of a
legislator who opens his office door only to find lobbyists on both sides of an
issue working together on another issue. ‘Unlikely alliances’ make decision
makers and the public sit up and take notice: If people who disagree on so many
things agree on this issue, then maybe there’s some merit in their position.

From:A Citizen’s Guide To Politics In America –
How the System Works & How to Work the System, by Barry R. Rubin (M.E.
Sharpe, Armonk, New York/London; 1997-2000)

Because
a shot that missed had been taken at Gen. Edwin Walker on April 10, 1963 the
Dallas Police, FBI and Secret Service knew they had an unidentified political
sniper in the vicinity and that must have been considered a serious threat to
the President when he came there.

Lee
Harvey Oswald’s brother Robert, a former U.S. Marine sergeant who knew him best
said, “….I believe the real reason Walker’s life was spared was that Lee Had
not yet become accustomed to the new rifle, and had never before used a
telescopic sight.”

“I am
certain about this,” Robert Oswald wrote in his book Lee – A Portrait of Lee Harvey
Oswald:

“We
talked a great deal about rifles and hunting whenever we had time together,
because he knew that this was one of my hobbies. When I last saw Lee in
November, 1962, I’m sure he would have told me if he had been learning to use a
telescopic sight or if he had been doing any hunting or practice shooting. I t
would have been a natural subject of conversation for us. Someone who is
accustomed to using rifles without scopes does not find it easy to adjust to
the use of a scope. Riflemen making the change often fail to allow for the
recoil, and some have suffered severe injuries as a result – some have even had
their eyes cut open.”

“The
contrast between Lee’s failure to kill General Walker and his tragic success on
November 22 cannot be accounted for unless we assume that he spent a
considerable amount of time practicing with the Mannlicher-Carcano during the
intervening months, growing accustomed to the weapon and its telescopic sight.”

“That is
why I find it hard to understand the Commission’s refusal to take seriously the
testimony of the witnesses who helped account for the difference in the results
of the two assassination attempts.”

The
Warren Commission had reports and interviewed six witnesses to Oswald
practicing with the scope at a rifle range, but discounted their testimony when
it concluded, “Although the testimony of these [six] witnesses was partially
corroborated by other witnesses, there was other evidence which prevented the
Commission from reaching the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the person
these witnesses saw.”

Robert
Oswald found this explanation baffling, “The Commission itself does not
challenge them,” writes Oswald. “It does not contend that they joined in a
conspiracy to deceive the Commission. It simply ignores what they have to say.
It concludes that “there is no other evidence which indicates that he took the
rifle or a package which might have contained the rifle out of the Paine’s
garage, where it was stored, prior to that date.”

Which
makes Robert conclude: “If Lee did not spend a considerable amount of time
practicing with that rifle in the weeks and months before the assassination,
then I would say that Lee did not fire the shots that killed the President and
wounded Governor Connally.”

“How did
Lee get to a rifle range or out into open country for his firing sessions? If
he had depended on public transportation, people would have noticed him
carrying a weapon aboard a bus, streetcar or train, however carefully he tried
to conceal it. I know of no witness who recalled seeing him traveling on public
transportation with a rifle. That’s why I find it difficult to understand the
Commission’s eagerness to dismiss the one group of witnesses who give us a
clear idea of when and where and how Lee learned to use his new rifle with the
precisions he displayed on November 22.”

“I find
it easier to believe that Lee spent some time practicing with the
Mannlicher-Carcano between April and November than to accept the Commission’s
conclusion that the rifle was stored away during most of that time – particularly
for several weeks before the assassination.”

“Without
a considerable amount of practice with that weapon, I do not understand how Lee
could have fired it with any accuracy that some of the best riflemen in the
United States found it difficult to match.”

“It
would have taken hours of practice for Lee to become acquainted with the
characteristics of the rifle, its recoil, and specially the use of the scope.
He had to know, for example whether the scope was zeroed in for one hundred
yards or one hundred and fifty yards or two hundred yards. Unless he knew that,
he could have overshot any target.”

“If Lee
did not spend a considerable amount of time practicing with that rifle in the
weeks and months before the assassination, then I would say that Lee did not
fire the shots that killed the President and wounded Governor Connally.”

As I’m sure you know, the JFK database was created
in response to the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. In section
5(d) of the Act NARA was required to create “a uniform system of electronic
records” comprising identification aids created for each record transmitted to
the Archivist. The Act did not stipulate what data fields should be included on
the identification aid.

NARA met the obligations of the Act when it created
a uniform system and made it available to the agencies that were transmitting
the assassination related document to the NARA for inclusion in the Collection.
The originating agencies entered the data fields for each document prior to
transfer and transferred the data at the same time the records were accessioned
by NARA. NARA then entered the data into the JFK Master System and has
maintained that system, as well as the public use version on archives.gov since
that time.

Accordingly, we believe that NARA has fully complied
with the requirements of the Act.

NARA has freely acknowledged, however, that the
“current status” field is out of date, and we realized that this frustrates you
and other researchers.

The Special Access and FOIA unit that is responsible
for the constitution of the Collection and maintenance of the database has
extensive responsibilities for records outside of the Collection. Updates have
unfortunately been delayed due to other FOIA review and access policy demands
on their limited resources.

I am pleased to inform you that the Special Access
and FOIA unit has consulted a team to process all of the JFK documents that are
being withheld for release by 2017 in accordance with the JFK Act (the only
basis to withhold records beyond that time would be if the President personally
certifies continued postponement, under section 5(g)(2)(D) of the JFK Act).

As part of that process, the team is currently
updating the JFK Collection Master System.

We then intend to update the public use version once
the data has been corrected, although we do not expect the update to be
complete until 2017.

We welcome any additional input you would like to
provide us about deficiencies in the database, so that we can be sure to
correct them.

Sincerely,
Martha Wagner Murphy

Chief,
Special Access and FOIA Staff

National
Archives at College Park

BILL KELLY RESPONDS:

Dear
Martha Murphy,

Thank
you for inviting me and other researchers to provide additional input on the
deficiencies in the JFK Collection database as well as the opportunity to
comment on matters of NARA policies and procedures regarding the JFK Act.

A number
of speakers commented on the data base t a recent conference in Washington D.C.
on the 50th anniversary of the release of the Warren Report, one
saying it just “didn’t work” and another saying it is “basically useless,” so
your acknowledgement that the “current status” of the database frustrates
researchers is an understatement.

The idea
that the CIA could accelerate the release of thousands of documents in 2003 that
were due for release in 2010 proves that such acceleration is possible and
there’s no excuse why the remaining sealed JFK Assassination records can’t be
processed by the 2013 National Declassification Review system already in place.
It’s also hard to imagine how hard it would be to update the Master System and
the public access database at that time.

Beyond
the basic frustration of an un-useable public database, we have found that
Secret Service records reportedly destroyed have folders that are marked
“withheld,” and that some thought destroyed have been located among the private
papers of former agents (Blaine), while other government assassination records have
been located among the private papers of former chief counsel Richard Sprague,
Esq. and former WC attorney Howard Willins, and there appears to be little
attempt to acquire these records for inclusion the JFK Collection as required
by the law. Why aren’t the JFK Assassination records in the hands of former
government employees being pursued, acquired and included in the collection? I
believe Blaine and other Secret Service agents have more records and I suspect
so does DOD historian Dr. Alfred Goldberg.

Why
can’t you scan and post on line the most frequently requested documents rather
than continuing to manually respond to the same requests over and over?

Why
can’t you tell us how many documents are still being withheld, but you can’t even
though Congress required the Review Board to publish a list of such records in
the Federal Register?

Why
can’t you provide a printout of all 1,100 CIA NBR records that are postponed
until 2017?

Why
can’t you remove the remaining redactions in the records previously released?

Why
can’t you tell us the number of assassination records that have been destroyed
and are missing?

It is frustrating to have NARA say “We cannot confirm any ONI
records are in fact missing from the collection,” when we know of many that
aren’t in the collection now, and we know how determined ONI was to exclude all
of its assassination records from the collection. You must acknowledge they are
missing before you even start to look for them.

It would
be good for the NARA JFK Collection staff to meet with or continue a dialog
with a focus group of researchers that we have informally formed so we can
continue to advise you as we get closer to 2017.

Giving
select researchers access to the Master System directory would help, especially
those researchers who are compiling lists of records withheld, destroyed and
missing, as well as those who are creating a guide and index to the collection,
something that Congress and the JFK Act requires the Archivist to do:

Final
Report ARRB p. 184-5 - Section 4: President John F. Kennedy Assassination
Records Collection at the National Archives and Records Administration. (a) In
General (1)….The Collection shall consist of record copies of all Government
records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which shall
be transmitted to the National Archives in accordance with section 2107 of
title 44, United States Code. The
Archivist shall prepare and publish a subject guidebook and index to the
collection….”

It
doesn’t say anything about an unuseable searchable data base or Master System
that the public can’t have access to. So here we are decades after Congress
passed this law – and there is still no prepared and published subject
guidebook and index, something that researchers themselves are apparently going
to have to do.

Besides preparing our own guidebook and index, and continuing
the on-going dialogs between the NARA staff and researchers, the only thing we
can do is to file FOIA requests and appeals and ask Congress to conduct its
required oversight of the JFK Act – hold hearings and obtain the testimony of
those responsible for the implementing the law and destroying and wrongfully
withholding records.

Why
hasn’t NARA requested Congress to oversee the JFK Act and enforce the law
despite the reticence of almost all of the government agencies who waited out
the ARRB?

Final
Report – “Section 4: (e) Oversight – The Committee on Government Operations of
the House of Representatives and the Committee on Governmental Affairs of the
Senate shall have continuing oversight jurisdiction with respect to the
collection.”

Why
aren’t these committees doing their job and overseeing the enforcement of the
JFK Act, which according to the law, “…continue in effect until such time as
the Archivist certifies to the President and Congress that all assassination
records have been made available to the public in accordance with this Act.”